Page:The Truth about Marriage.djvu/20

Rh the suggestion of such a marriage, but let us not call it a marriage, instead, a gratification of pure animal lust.

And yet it is perfectly possible that the purely lustful spirit—the beastlike spirit—enters into many so-called marriages between human beings. Sometimes it exists in both parties to the union, sometimes only in the man, sometimes only in the woman.

If it exists in one only, it is unspeakably offensive to the one in whom it does not exist.

But there are myriads of others who would go further in what seems like pure animal gratification, and because of the pre-eminently human aesthetic instincts enhance the enjoyment by reason of association with enchanting surroundings.

They would find an added delight in the appeal of beauty in the woman or the man. They would intoxicate themselves further with the glow of wine and the stimulation of music. Perhaps there would be the preliminary of delicate feasting. Even there might be the beauty of sensuous poetry.

All of these delights are made use of sometimes in order to lift up what would otherwise be merely brutal lust, but which is at best largely animalism, for it has little of the high flavor of sincere and unselfish friendship, little of the better part of men and women that we vaguely call the spiritual. It has as Rh